Indian political and legislative processes are far from perfect. Recently, this has led to arguments (on this blog, and elsewhere) exploring the possibility of increased judicial intervention in the legislative process – where the judiciary ‘examines the validity of procedures leading to enactment’. In this post, I suggest that judicial scrutiny of legislative activity should not underestimate the power of democratic processes to produce respect for the rule of law and rights. However, this approach requires us to locate the ‘constitutionality’ of legislative action in the legitimate decision-making processes of the political system (as opposed to the legal system). Through an examination of the events surrounding the Land Acquisition Bill (2015), the Citizenship Amendment Act (2019), and the three agricultural laws (2020), I highlight how actors beyond courts may impact the constitutionality of legislation.
I briefly outline the two approaches to ‘constitutionality’ under the rubrics of legal and political constitutionalism and then analyse the three legislative events from the lens of political constitutionalism. I do not suggest a wholesale bar on judicial interventions in the legislative process (nor do authors who advocate judicial interventions suggest abandoning other means to improve the legislative process). I also do not delve into how political or legislative reforms may be achieved. The purpose of this post is merely to highlight how democratic processes can also be an avenue to achieve constitutional goods.
Legal and Political Constitutionalism
Legal constitutionalism suggests that because citizens and legislators may not always embrace the values necessary for constitutional democracy, the respect for these values needs to be protected by judges. Therefore, judges serve as a key restraint on legislative power – evaluating whether legislation satisfies constitutional values. (E.g., the Supreme Court invalidating legislation that violates the freedom of speech.) Stepping outside the grammar of rights, such exercises of legislative power typically involve substantive and fundamental competing interests (e.g., public order v free speech), and legal constitutionalism suggests that judges are best situated to settle these crucial issues. However, dissenting opinions and overruled judgements indicate that judges themselves disagree over which outcomes uphold constitutional values. Therefore, the ‘correctness’ of these outcomes largely stems from legal structures that confer jurisdiction on courts to settle these disputes and confer finality on judicial determinations on competing societal interests.
Political constitutionalism argues that ‘the democratic process is equally, if not more legitimate and capable than courts at resolving these substantive and fundamental disagreements.’ Rather that suggesting judicial oversight, it focuses inter alia on: (i) improving the democratic process through improving electoral and parliamentary systems (e.g., proportional representation and parliamentary scrutiny); (ii) creating multiple inflection points where power is balanced (federalism, off-set election cycles, and independent bodies); and (iii) political parties competing for the support of diverse interest groups who themselves have cross-cutting interests, compelling political parties to listen varied viewpoints and often compromise. Crucially, it ‘locates the ‘constitutionality’ of legislation within the political and not the legal system’ by focusing on how decision making procedures can be made legitimate through balancing institutions and ensuring transparent participation. Where legal constitutionalism may emphasise judicially policed rights as central to constitutional culture, political constitutionalism sees democratic participation as causing citizens to identify with a constitutional system.
This may sound idyllic, and caveats must be made in the Indian context. India’s political and legislative structures contain several democratic weaknesses (role of the governor, ordinance powers, anti-defection, partisan speakers, lack of intra-party democracy, imbalanced federalism). As a result, the efficacy and visibility of constraints on power envisioned by political constitutionalism may vary or be entirely absent. In all the three legislative instances discussed below, there was immense public pressure in the form of demonstrations, speeches, strikes, and vigils despite fragile protections for civil liberties. The need for such resistance to hold power accountable does not undermine the argument for political constitutionalism (such actions are firmly within the democratic process envisioned by political constitutionalism) but rather points to the urgent need to reform our political structures to allow for public opinion, contestation, and compromise through elected officials without blood having to be shed.
Readers will forgive my painfully brief explanation of three complex legal issues. The goal here is merely to identify when the structures of political constitutionalism are at play (I tag them in italics for brevity).
Land Acquisition Bill
On 24 February 2015, the Government introduced a bill (Land Acquisition Bill) to replace an ordinance which amended the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. The Land Acquisition Bill identified certain situations when the government did not need to obtain landowners’ consent or conduct a social impact assessment before acquiring land. The Land Acquisition Bill passed the Lok Sabha on 10 March but the government did not advance the Bill in the Rajya Sabha because it lacked a majority in the upper house (bi-cameralism and federalism). The existing ordinance was due to expire on April 5, but the Rajya Sabha session continued till 8 May. As ordinances cannot be passed when Parliament is in session, the ordinance looked certain to expire until, on 28 March, the President prorogued (terminated the session of) the Rajya Sabha, allowing the government to re-issue the ordinance on April 3, effectively circumventing Parliamentary approval. These actions were challenged in the Supreme Court as an ‘abuse of the President’s ordinance powers’.
The Land Acquisition Bill was referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee. In the BJP chaired committee, it was reported that all eleven BJP MPs moved amendments reinstating the need to acquire landowners consent and conduct social impact assessments (parliamentary scrutiny and intra-party contestation). However, the Land Acquisition Bill never passed the Rajya Sabha, and in August 2015 the ordinance was allowed to lapse two months before the 2015 Bihar elections (staggered electoral cycles). The Supreme Court would eventually dismiss the court challenge as infructuous.
Citizenship Amendment Act
The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA) allows illegal migrant to apply for citizenship if: (i) they entered India before 31 December 2014; (ii) they receive exemptions under the Passports and Foreigners Acts; (iii) they are from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, or Pakistan; and (iv) they are Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Parsi, Jain, or Buddhist. The Government claimed the intention of the law was to protect religious minorities in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan from persecution, and the exclusion of Muslim migrants was a ‘reasonable classification’ within the legislature’s discretion given that Muslims constituted a majority in these three countries.
However, critics of the CAA argued that for the Act to be constitutional, the classification must be connected to the purpose of the legislation. If the goal of the CAA was to protect individuals from religious persecution, then the test under the Act must be – is the individual being persecuted? In other words, the law cannot (without basis) presume that Muslims are not persecuted in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The exclusion of Muslims was thus disconnected from the goal of protecting individuals from persecution, and hence violated Article 14 (equality before law). It was also pointed out that the exclusion of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar suggested an unprincipled (and potentially discriminatory) use of legislative power.
The adoption of the CAA led to sustained nationwide protests. The CAA was also opposed by several states and the Union Government received resolutions the legislatures of Meghalaya, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Punjab denouncing the CAA (federalism). Kerala and Rajasthan would go on to sue the Union Government under Article 131 of the Constitution over the CAA. The Government has not repealed the CAA. However, despite Parliamentary manuals requiring that subordinate legislation (rules) for the legislation be adopted within six months of a law passing, two years later, the Union Government is yet to adopt any rules for the CAA (as of writing, the Home Ministry has requested time till January 2022). In the two years since the passage of CAA, 140 petitions have been instituted challenging the constitutionality of the legislation, but the Supreme Court has yet to render a verdict.
Agricultural Laws
In 2020, the Government introduced three laws aimed at reforming the agricultural sector (Farm Laws), discussed in detail here. The laws were passed in the Rajya Sabha using a voice vote instead of a division vote. A voice vote is where the chairperson places the issue before the house and decides the vote based on whether the yes’s or no’s are louder. This may be fine to quickly dispose of issues on which there is significant consensus. However, for more closely contested votes, the process of a division vote exists (where MPs vote electronically). It stands to reason that any vote that is won during a voice vote should also be able to pass in a division vote (otherwise the vote is wholly illegitimate as the chairperson has usurped the collective decision-making of the house and replaced it with their own singular discretion). To guard against this risk, the Rajya Sabha Rules expressly provide that if the outcome of a voice vote is challenged, there must be a division vote (r. 253).
The Farm Laws were passed amongst pandemonium in the Rajya Sabha, and the Chairperson contended that opposition MPs were not in their seats when they challenged the voice vote (a claim contradicted by video footage of the day but an issue also not helped by the fact that the audio feed from the Rajya Sabha was cut for half an hour). After the Farm Laws were passed, the leader of the opposition met the President who protested the breaches of parliamentary procedure and requested the President to refuse assent (another structural inflection point). Soon after, the NDA Government lost its oldest coalition partner (the SAD) (coalitions as a restraint on power). The yearlong protests by farmers and the incident at Lakhimpur Kheri have sufficiently entered the popular consciousness that they need not be repeated here. Towards the end of this stalemate, an MP from the ruling party introduced a private members bill to secure some of the protections sought by protesting farmers (intra-party contestation). Eventually, in December 2021 the Farm Laws were repealed in the lead-up to state elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab (staggered electoral cycles).
Conclusion
This piece began by noting that the shortfalls in our political and legislative system to meet our needs for legitimate government can be addressed both through judicial interventions and through political structures. The goal of the above examples is to highlight how political structures such as bi-cameralism, federalism, staggered elections, coalition politics, intra-party democracy, and public protests can restrain power, arrive at decisions about contentious issues in legitimate ways, and respond to breaches of the rule of law. These structures are by no stretch perfect. However, reform of political structures must begin from an understanding that they are worth reforming. At a bare minimum, this requires a discourse which situates the constitution in the political system beyond courts. It also requires us to be able to look past political double-speak and understand when political structures are at play.
There is also reason to be cautious of increased judicial intervention. It is notable than in all three of the above examples, constitutional courts have been conspicuous in their inability or unwillingness to intervene. It is always possible to examine individual situations and argue that a court acting as it is supposed to, could have done better. But this ignores the reality that just as political actors do not always act in conformity with their roles, courts are also not perfect functionaries. Arguments for increased judicial intervention must address the reality that constitutional courts in India have their own structural and behavioural weakness. Lastly, where judicial interventions may vest more power in judges, a focus on reforming electoral systems and structuring institutions so that governmental power is constantly subject to meaningful competition and accountable to cross-cutting interests creates space for a broader set of actors to engage in constitutional authorship.